Welcome to another week of Robertson’s Reportings! On April 8, Virginia’s basketball team won its first NCAA national championship game to end March Madness. The Cavaliers beat the Texas Tech Red Raiders in Monday’s game by only eight points after overtime. Last year, Virginia made history by being the first team to lose to a number 16 seed, Maryland Baltimore County, so the win this year was even more sweet because of the huge comeback.

New York City has called for a public health emergency because of a recent measles outbreak. Vaccinations are now required in parts of Brooklyn after 285 cases of measles have been reported since October. Five of these people were admitted into intensive care. Mayor Bill de Blasio commented on the issue, “This is the epicenter of a measles outbreak that is very, very troubling and must be dealt with immediately.” The majority of the infected are children under the age of 18 and members of the Orthodox Jewish communities because of the low immunization rate.

On April 10, SpaceX planned to launch the world’s current most powerful rocket: the Falcon Heavy. This flight is the rocket’s second flight to space and will last for about one year. The Falcon Heavy can carry up to 140,000 pounds, over two times the amount of the United States’ second most powerful rocket. The rocket launch was supposed to be broadcasted on SpaceX’s Youtube channel for about two hours, but the high speed winds caused the launch to be moved to until Thursday.

There has been an E. Coli outbreak in five different states, and 96 people have been infected. The source of the disease in Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Ohio, and Virginia is unknown, so many news sources have reported the outbreak as being “mysterious.” Symptoms of the sickness typically begin between three or four days after consuming the bacteria. Eleven people have been hospitalized, but no deaths have been reported.

On Wednesday, the first image of a black hole was shown to the public by a group of international scientists that have been researching the mysterious holes for years. The black hole lives in the Messier 87 galaxy, about 53 million light-years from Earth. The matter and light consuming vortex is reported to be about six billion times the mass of our sun. As scientists predicted, the hole is “surrounded by dust and gas swirling around it at velocities near the speed of light, which causes the detectable emission of radiation.” Now that the milestone of an actual photo being taken has been accomplished, scientists hope to discover more about the black hole in the center of our galaxy.

Four million Americans were put under a blizzard warning because Midwesterners were in the path of severe winter storms including snow, strong winds, and a decreased atmospheric pressure. Meteorologist Scott Dergan warned, “We’re going to have to deal with snow melt and water filtering through the Missouri River system for the next month or so.” The National Weather Service called the storm that hit on Wednesday and through Thursday a “potentially historic winter storm” because of the severe conditions. See you next time on Robertson’s Reportings, coverage you can count on!